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The complexity of resilience

On 24th August, a 6.2 magnitude earthquake struck the centre of Italy and almost destroyed the town of Amatrice, also heavily damaging other villages and towns in the area. With almost 300 killed, it left thousands more without a roof over their heads apart from the damage to the infrastructure and disruption of the socio-economic aspects of their daily lives.Read more.

An architect and urban planner, PK Das is known as an “activist-architect” and is one of the foremost voices in Mumbai on equitable access to open spaces and developing affordable housing models through participatory planning. In October 2016, he was awarded the Jane Jacobs International Medal by the Rockefeller Foundation, and was a featured speaker at the Habitat III Conference in Quito. The following are the excerpts from a conversation with him regarding the issue of affordable housing in Mumbai.

Land policy was at center stage at Habitat III in the high-altitude Ecuadorean capital of Quito all week, as the New Urban Agenda was formally adopted on the last day of the United Nations global cities summit.

One in three people in the world lack access to a toilet. The traditional view is that lack of access to toilets is a problem in rural areas. But with rapid urbanization across the developing world, the number of people without access to proper sanitation who live in cities is growing rapidly. This serious urban problem presents a host of new challenges for cities looking to improve sanitation. Since 2011, with Global Communities, I have overseen a series of water and sanitation projects in both rural and urban Ghana. During that time, we’ve identified some of the biggest challenges of urban sanitation.

While Habitat III is proudly advertising the participatory and inclusive city and while there are many NGOs involved in side and networking events during the conference, grassroots initiatives and Civil Society Organisations (CSOs) are gravely underrepresented.

Even as thousands of urbanists from around the world were arriving in Quito for the United Nations’ Habitat III summit on cities, workers in and around the conference venue were still hanging signs, assembling exhibits and brushing topcoats of paint on nearby buildings.

Even as thousands of urbanists from around the world were arriving in Quito for the United Nations’ Habitat III summit on cities, workers in and around the conference venue were still hanging signs, assembling exhibits and brushing topcoats of paint on nearby buildings.

The future of cities will be shaped this week high in the Andes mountains, as nearly 50,000 people converge for a summit aimed at adopting a new global vision on how to plan, build and run cities equitably and sustainably.